Riches and Poverty (1910)

CHAPTER II. The National Income

THE NATIONAL INCOME

The total product consists of goods and services 8 The exchanged product can be measured 9 Income Tax assessments; my 1905 estimate confirmed 11 The income eluding taxation 13 Income from abroad 15 Aggregate of incomes exceeding £160 per annum 16 Growth of Income Tax income in five years 17 Aggregate of small incomes lying between Income Tax payers and wage-earning classes 20 Aggregate of incomes of manual workers 29 Aggregate of the national income 31 The Income Tax exemption limit bisects the total product 31

CHAPTER III. Distribution of the National Income

DISTRIBUTION OF THE NATIONAL INCOME

The average family income 32 Investigation of number of Income Tax payers 33 Number of incomes under £700 39 Number of incomes over £700 measured by number of large houses 43 Approximate number of Income Tax payers 44 Persons with respectively more and less than £160 per annum 47 One-half of entire product taken by 12 per cent. of the population 47 One-third of entire product taken by one-thirtieth of population 48 A poor people thinly veneered by the well-to-do 49 The movement in 1903-1908 50

CHAPTER IV. The Estates of Rich and Poor

THE ESTATES OF RICH AND POOR

The graduated Estate Duty of Sir William Harcourt 51 Deaths per annum in the United Kingdom 54 Numbers and values of estates passing at death in recent years 55 Savings of the poor 57 Rich and poor estates in an average year 59

CHAPTER V. The National Accumulation

THE NATIONAL ACCUMULATION

Estimate of the accumulated wealth of the United Kingdom 62 Public property, Imperial and local 65 The national and local debts private mortgages upon public assets 67 British wealth in private hands 68 Foreign wealth in British hands 71 Average wealth per head 71

CHAPTER VI. The Monopoly of Capital

THE MONOPOLY OF CAPITAL

Living property owners estimated from Death Duty records 73 Growing avoidance of Death Duties 77 120,000 persons own two-thirds of the national capital 79 The alleged "capital" of the working classes 80 Those rule who own 80

CHAPTER VII. The Area of the United Kingdom

THE AREA OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Area the fundamental attribute of land 81 Almost the entire area in private hands 82 One-half the area owned by 2,500 persons 83 The number of landlords 84 Estimate of land rents 86 Why the aggregate of land rents is relatively small 87 The cheapening of food 87 The small areas of the town 88 The rent-charge formed by local rates 90

CHAPTER VIII. Those Who Work and Whose Who Wait

THOSE WHO WORK AND WHOSE WHO WAIT

Effect of congestion of capital upon distribution 93 Practical examples of the distributive process 94 Capital largely divorced from business ability 99 Schedule D profits compared with paid-up capitals 100 Effect of appreciation of securities upon position of the wage-earners 101 Railway profits and railway wages 102 Calculating the labour factor 103 Capital takes the lion's share 106

CHAPTER IX. Profits, Bad Trade and Unemployment

PROFITS, BAD TRADE AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Growth of profits in recent years 107 Rise and fall of wages in recent years 108 Growth of profits compared with rise and fall in wages 110 Labour bears the brunt of depression 115 Records of unemployment of Trade Union members 116 The Trade Union unemployment rate probably representative 119 How Trade Unions keep the tools sharpened 121 The great majority of the British people lack security of tenure of employment 122 "Remedies" for unemployment 123 Insurance against unemployment 123 Labour Exchanges no remedy 124

CHAPTER X. Part of Their Wages

PART OF THEIR WAGES

Accident and disease concomitants of wages 125 Laxity of factory inspection 127 Accidents in factories and workshops 127 Diseases of occupations in factories and workshops 129 Accidents in mines and quarries 130 Accidents on railways 136 Accidents on ships 137 Accidents in certain engineering works 137 Aggregate of reported accidents and cases of industrial disease 138 Phthisis as an industrial disease 139 Physical deterioration not an accident 140

CHAPTER XI. Consequences

CONSEQUENCES

The governance of the rich 141 The direction of life and labour through expenditure 143 The cotton trade and the fate of its products 144 The demand for woollens 145 The call for boots 147 The waste of labour of nominally useful workmen 149 The parable of the temporary supper-room 149 The parable of the Ascot frock 151 Mr Rowntree's primary poverty line 153 The possible call for commodities by the poor 154 The agricultural labourer's call 155 The boot employee as a customer for the textile employee 156 The Error of Distribution connotes the misdirection and degradation of labour 156

CHAPTER XII. The Waste of Capital

THE WASTE OF CAPITAL

The national accumulations small in relation to the national income 159 More evidences of poverty than of wealth 159 The moral of oversea investments 160 Six thousand millions of capital wasted in forty years 163 The demand for luxuries misdirects capital 164 The waste of capital in the game of competition 166 The waste of capital in weak and bogus company promotion 166

BOOK II. Towards Organization

TOWARDS ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER XIII THE GOLDEN KEY

More trade and a better distribution 171 The social problem must be discussed with reference to the Error of Distribution 172

CHAPTER XIV. The Nation's Children

THE NATION'S CHILDREN

The renewal of the race 173 The verdict of anthropology 173 Injustice before birth and after 176 The innocence of the Factory Act 178 The Physical Deterioration Committee on reasonable care of the infant 180 The mothers of the future 181 The mothers of the present 181 Women health inspectors 182 The public medical service 183 The small cost of a public maternity fund 184 A Jewish example 185 The birth of a child a matter of national moment 187 Neglectful parents must be punished 187 The segregation of the unfit 187 Twenty-five million births in twenty years 189

CHAPTER XV. The School

THE SCHOOL

The Error of Distribution and the heritage of the child 191 The nation loses the bulk of its intelligence and genius 191 The school must be a preparation for life 192 The doctor in the school 193 The school children of Bradford 194 "The child has got to be fed" 196 Observation and expression 199 The study of systematized knowledge 202 The teaching of hygiene and temperance 204 Compulsory continuation schools for both boys and girls 204 Can we afford to make our schools what we desire them to be? 207

CHAPTER XVI. The Home

THE HOME

An increasing population in a diminishing number of centres 209 Our many poorhouses 210 The years taken from the lives of the poor 211 Crowding and overcrowding 212 Tenement statistics 212 Overcrowding on area has increased 213 Not only death and disease but ugliness to be fought 215 Where further building should be prevented 217 The housing question as a land question and as a capital question 218 The community should be landlord 218 The taxation of land on its selling value would assist in municipalizing area 219 The small area needed to rehouse our city populations 220 The municipality must plan its extensions in advance 221 Some examples from Germany 222 An example in the United Kingdom 223 How land and capital enter into the housing problem 229 National housing loans needed 231

CHAPTER XVII. The Empty Country

THE EMPTY COUNTRY

The migration from the country to the towns 234 The decrease in agricultural employment and its causes 240 Agriculture must be an increasingly limited field for employment 240 The cheap land outside the towns 243 Is control of area worth half a year's income? 243 The community can acquire cheap land and make it valuable 244 Rising food prices 247 Neglected afforestation 248 Imperial questions must be treated on an Imperial scale 249

CHAPTER XVIII. Organization

ORGANIZATION

An insufficient production of ponderable commodities 250 The small stream of ponderable things is made the subject of unnecessary services 251 Present production is wasteful 252 The waste of labour in competition 252 The waste of labour in distribution, etc 253 So called "natural" monopolies 255 Monopoly necessary if labour is to be fully economized 256 Power distribution and public control 256 The problem of monopoly illustrated by the milk trade 259 The milk trade typical of many other services 262 Municipal and joint-stock direction contrasted 263 The management of our railway companies 263 The prevalence of nepotism in private enterprise 264 The Belgian State railways 265 Coal production and distribution 267 The private trust the only alternative to public ownership 269 Public ownership of capital the only remedy for unemployment 270 Those govern who employ 271

CHAPTER XIX. The Aged Poor

THE AGED POOR

Two million persons over 65 years of age and most of them poor 272 Mr Thomas Burt's return of aged paupers 273 Mr Ritchie's return of number of paupers relieved during a year 275 Of the population aged 65 and over, one in three is a pauper 277 Probable number of aged paupers 278 Length of the working life 280 The Charity Organization Society and cost 283 Mr Asquith's Old Age Pension Act 284 First year's working of Old Age Pensions 285 Old Age Pensions at 65 286 Invalidity Insurance 286

CHAPTER XX. Adam Smith's First Maxim of Taxation

ADAM SMITH'S FIRST MAXIM OF TAXATION

The famous first maxim self-contradictory 287 Taxation in relation to the Error of Distribution 288 The doctrine of equality of sacrifice 288 An unanswerable case for repeal of all food duties 289 The duties on liquors and tobacco should remain 289

CHAPTER XXI. The Main Instrument of Taxation

THE MAIN INSTRUMENT OF TAXATION

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